[shaneqful]

In fairness, this is really down to where you live. If you live in the EU you will see exactly how much sugar is in the drink by looking at the label because that's what the law says.

It's up to regulators to hold companies to account. They certainly aren't going to print things that could possibly harm sales on their labels by themselves.

[eseehausen]

In the USA it's on the label (though on the back, usually) too. They're just allowed to say that no additional sugar was added. The real push is moving from something that people in the US can't readily parse (like grams of sugar) to something they can (like teaspoons of sugar).

[gambiting]

For a second I thought you got these backwards. Having it in grams is so much clearer. I get really annoyed when recipes tell me to add X teaspons/tablespoons/cups of something - these are not units of measure!

[eseehausen]

A teaspoon is basically 5ml, which is around 5 grams. Most Americans have experience measuring foodstuffs with teaspoons, not with scales, and even if they did, it wouldn't be in grams.

[mbrameld]

Yes they are. Just because you're not familiar with them doesn't mean they're not units of measure.

[gambiting]

Are they defined anywhere officially? Like is there a standard which says how much volume or weight is held by one teaspoon or one cup? Because I have teaspoons which vary widely in sizes, the same with cups. And even if you use a teaspoon to measure - is it with the contents flat? Or in a little pile? It's too ambiguous, and therefore - not a unit of measure.

[eseehausen]

It's obvious this is some kind of pet peeve, but a little googling would answer your own questions. It seems like the NIST is the regulatory body in the US presiding over official measurements, and they provide a brief overview here: http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/cooking.cfm

Wikipedia has more information on exact conversions and the domestic and international agreements that set the sizes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

You're welcome to do more research to confirm Wikipedia's assertions. As for whether it's flat or a little pile, 1 tsp is flat (5ml). What you're thinking of is the commonly used cooking instruction "heaping tablespoon", because yes, when cooking you don't have to have everything down to the exact ml.

EDIT: And again, more research done for you: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/59711/rounded-he...

[gambiting]

Alright, I stand corrected. My apologies.

[asavadatti]

Exactly this. I don't understand this need for introducing additional units of measurement.

[eseehausen]

Again, for many Americans, using grams is introducing additional units of measurement. Obviously, the US should've moved to metric forever ago, but we didn't. When addressing a public health crisis, it's good to put things in a way the majority of the public understand.

[StavrosK]

Yes, but they still manage to sidestep the issue by printing information based on "serving sizes". Yes, Doritos, I clearly meant to eat this medium-sized bag in four sittings!

We should sit down and figure out a way to show nutritional information without these cheap tricks. For example, you have to show the nutritional information per unit of wrapping. That way, a bag can't be thought of as four servings, one bag = one serving.

[forgetsusername]

>That way, a bag can't be thought of as four servings, one bag = one serving.

How is that any better, really? You still have to do the same basic math if you eat less than the full package. Knowing that a large bag of chips is 1200 calories is irrelevant to the serving size I'll actually be eating.

[StavrosK]

Because people eat the whole bag the vast majority of the time, so the people who need to do math are now the minority.

[breischl]

Probably untrue for any of the larger sizes of bags. I routinely buy the one pound bags of tortilla chips because they're cheaper, but I have never once consumed the whole thing in one sitting.

It gets even more ridiculous for other foods. Do you eat/drink gallons of milk, whole watermelons, quarts of chicken stock or several pound bags of rice in one sitting?

[StavrosK]

Are you seriously arguing for arbitrary units rather than consistent ones, because "you buy larger sizes of bags"? Every piece of food has nutritional information at the back, with columns for 100 grams and one serving.

You're arguing that the serving size should unrealistically small, rather than the whole bag, because it doesn't work for every case? For every coke bottle this fails, I have five cans it succeeds for. Nobody drinks a third of a can of coke.

[breischl]

>>Are you seriously arguing for arbitrary units rather than consistent ones,

Actually, no, that's what you're doing. You said that that whatever amount is in the container should be "one serving." That's clearly ridiculous and arbitrary in many cases, which was my point. I would contend that they (manufacturer, regulator, whoever) should choose some reasonable, non-arbitrary size and stick with it. Then at least I can compare two different-sized packages with a hope of figuring out what's going on. Using 100 grams would actually be a reasonable idea, but is not what you actually said in your prior messages.

>>You're arguing that the serving size should unrealistically small, rather than the whole bag, because it doesn't work for every case?

You're arguing that the serving size should be unrealistically large, rather than a some reasonable size, because you think everyone always eats the entire package?

Incidentally, I'm curious - when they sell a 24-pack of Coke, are they supposed to show the values for the individual cans, or for the entire case? You keep saying that people consume the entire unit - so that would be the entire case, right? What about for 2-liter bottles? What about for things that aren't junk food?

[asavadatti]

"Total calories in this product" should be the metric.

[maxerickson]

Accurate nutrition labels are also required in the US, and there are requirements that other statements be true, and there are rules banning certain types of true statements, there just aren't rules banning every stupid true statement.

[bunderbunder]

I'm speaking from the USA, where food also has to be labeled. But nobody really pays attention to the back of the package, and there's very little regulation over what you're allowed to say on the front of the package.

So you get sugar bombs like this prominently claiming "no sugar added", and many consumers are confused into believing that this somehow means the contents of the package are healthy: http://www.healicsu.com/art/photos/643-juicy-juice-no-sugar-...